Kitchen Garden Forum

Visited plot after rain stopped early this morning, was there by 08:30. Ground dangerously wet, easy to slip over. Decided to remove some strawberry runners and plant up the two new raised beds.

That soil looks good enough to eat Pa snip - lucky strawberries!

Westi

Westi wrote:That soil looks good enough to eat Pa snip - lucky strawberries!

Westi

Hello Westi

I don't think I have ever had cause, or desire, to enthuse before about either manure or topsoil.

One of my fellow plot holders made I laugh yesterday. I was driving out from the allotments when he stopped me and told me what good stuff the manure looked and went on to enthuse about it but finishing up by him saying it was expensive. I just looked at him and said "is it though"....

Anything seems expensive when you go out and bag your own for free, as he does. Never mind the fuel costs in running back and forth or the time it takes for it to rot down fully.

Where there is muck there is brass, there is even different grades of muck

Should have a great crop of strawberries. Wonder how long it will take the slugs and snails to climb their way up there?

Yet again Primrose has hit the nail smack on the head. I found a slug two thirds of the way up to the top yesterday, I think I am going to have to try a copper band around the tops of them, or something else which may work.

Yes, snails certainly don't suffer from vertigo. I've found them at the top of a fence hidden behind ivy or other climbers. Would a coating of cheap vegetable oil on the wood make it too slippery for them to cling to? we've tried that with mixed success on metal poles holding bird feeder tubes to keep squirrels at bay but they've learned to run at them from a further distance and lurch themselves further up the pole to the junction point where the feeder tube brackets join the main pole.

you cant keep a good squirrel down

Good Supplier

I formed a buying group on our allotment site in 2014 to gain best buying prices wherever we could. Age old principle of coordinated buying.

Monday 9/11/15 I posted (first class) the groups first seed orders for the 2016 season to D T Brown seeds.

Received a phone call late yesterday afternoon (Wednesday 11/11/15 5:10pm) to inform me seed orders had been despatched.

Don't want to jump the gun but can't complain at that service.

Seed orders, and some non seed, arrived in two packages Friday 13/11/15

Seed potatoes and spring sowing onion / shallot sets obviously not sent out yet

Nothing missed off or substituted with the exception of the onion seed I personally wanted.
Seems D T Browns / Mr Fothergill 'Kelsae' onion beds suffered severe weather conditions in Italy
resulting in decimation and withdrawal from supply for this season.